Alice Miller > Quotes

“Rage and pain can apparently pass quickly if one is free to express them.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The individual psychological stages in the lives of most people are:

1. To be hurt as a small child without anyone recognizing the situation as such
2. To fail to react to the resulting suffering with anger
3. To show gratitude for what are supposed to be good intentions
4. To forget everything
5. To discharge the stored-up anger onto others in adulthood or to direct it against oneself”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“It is not the trauma itself that is the source of illness but the unconscious, repressed, hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness. This causes many people to commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.”
― Alice Miller

“Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can--depending on the decree of government or party--be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa.

But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“When children are trained, they learn how to train others in turn. Children who are lectured to, learn how to lecture; if they are admonished, they learn how to admonish; if scolded, they learn how to scold; if ridiculed, they learn how to ridicule; if humiliated, they learn how to humiliate; if their psyche is killed, they will learn how to kill--the only question is who will be killed: oneself, others, or both.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“As adults, we will hate only if we remain trapped in a situation in which we cannot give free expression to our feelings. It is this dependency that makes us start to hate. As soon as we break that dependency (which as adults we can normally do, unless we are prisoners of some totalitarian regime), as soon as we free ourselves from that slavery, then we will no longer hate.”
― Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting

“When still in diapers, the child learns to knock at the gates of love with “obedience,” and unfortunately often does not unlearn this ever after. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His “will” is completely identical with that of the government. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Without therapy, it is impossible for the grandiose person to cut the tragic link between admiration and love”
― Alice Miller

“In the following pages I shall apply the term "poisonous pedagogy" to this very complex endeavor. It will be clear from the context in question which of its many facets I am emphasizing at the moment. The specific facets can be derived directly from the preceding quotations from child-rearing manuals. These passages teach us that:

1. Adults are the masters (not the servants!) of the dependent child.

2. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong.

3. The child is held responsible for their anger.

4. The parents must always be shielded.

5. The child's life affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic adult.

6. The child's will must be "broken" as soon as possible.

7. All this must happen at a very early age, so the child "won't notice" and will
therefore not be able to expose the adults.

The methods that can be used to suppress vital spontaneity in the child are: laying traps, lying, duplicity, subterfuge, manipulation, "scare" tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation, distrust, humiliating and disgracing the child, scorn, ridicule, and coercion even to the point of torture.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.”
― Alice Miller

“When we consider the major role intimidation plays in this ideology, which was still at the peak of its popularity at the turn of the century, it is not surprising that Sigmund Freud had to conceal his surprising discovery of adults' sexual abuse of their children, a discovery he was led to by the testimony of his patients. He disguised his insight with the aid of a theory that nullified this inadmissible knowledge. Children of his day were not allowed, under the severest of threats, to be aware of what adults were doing to them. and if Freud had persisted in his seduction theory, he not only would have had his introjected parents to fear but would no doubt have been discredited, and probably ostracized, by middle-class society. In order to protect himself, he had to devise a theory that would preserve appearances by attributing all “evil”, guilt and wrongdoing to the child's fantasies. in which the parents served only as the objects of projection. We can understand why this theory omitted the fact that it is the parents who not only project their sexual and aggressive fantasies onto the child but also are able to act out these fantasies because they wield the power. It is probably thanks to this omission that many professionals in the psychiatric field, themselves the products of "poisonous pedagogy" have been able to accept the Freudian theory of drives, because it did not force them to question their idealized image of their parents. With the aid of Freud's drive and structural theories, they have been able to continue obeying the commandment they internalized in early childhood: "Thou shalt not be aware of what your parents are doing to you.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His “will” is completely identical with that of the government. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation. Educators have always known this and have exploited it for their own purposes. Grünewald writes that he has never yet found willfulness in an intellectually advanced or exceptionally gifted child. Such a child can, in later life, exhibit extraordinary acuity in criticizing the ideologies of his opponents—and in puberty even the views by his own parents—because in these cases his intellectual powers can function without impairment. Furthermore, the teacher finds the soil already prepared for obedience, and the political leader has only to harvest what has been sown.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“For millennia it has been permissible and customary for children to be used to satisfy a wide variety of adult needs. They have provided a cheap source of labor, an ideal outlet for the discharge of stored-up affect, a receptacle for unwanted feelings, an object for the projection of conflicts and fear, compensation for feelings of inferiority, and an opportunity for exercising power and obtaining pleasure. Among all the different ways of misusing a child, sexual abuse is of particular significance, stemming as it does from the major role sexuality plays in our body and from the hypocrisy still surrounding it in our society.”
― Alice Miller

“It is also a part of "poisonous pedagogy" to impart to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation and dutifully accepted by the young even though they are not only unproven but are demonstrably false. Examples of such beliefs are:

1. A feeling of duty produces love.
2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it.
3. Parents deserve respect simply because they are parents.
4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children.
5. Obedience makes a child strong.
6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful.
7. A low degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic.
8. Tenderness (doting) is harmful.
9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong.
10. Severity and coldness are a good preparation for life.
11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.
12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are.
13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended.
14. The body is something dirty and disgusting.
15. Strong feelings are harmful.
16. Parents are creatures free of drives and guilt.
17. Parents are always right.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Our world would be very different if the majority of babies had the chance to rule over their mothers like paschas and to be coddled by them, without having to concern themselves with their mothers’ needs.”
― Alice Miller

“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parent's expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parent's needs.”
― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me. This can be observed in various parental attitudes.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Various defense mechanisms can be used to reach a com- promise between the necessity of sparing the feelings of one’s parents and the need to express one’s own feelings. A patient of mine with a strict religious upbringing, for example, was able to spare her parents by directing her newly awakened rage against God. In God, whom her parents believed in, Inge hoped to have found the strong father who would be able to endure her feelings, who was not insecure, easily offended, and ailing like her own father. She wanted to feel free to direct her disappointment, despair, and resentment at God without having to fear that this would kill Him.”
― Alice Miller

“It is not the psychologists but the literary writers who are ahead of their time.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The church did not look with favor on this. The sins associated with wanting to know have always seemed more sinful to it than those of not wanting to know. And it has always considered those people more pleasing to God who have sought what is essential in the invisible and have ignored the visible as non-essential.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good

“Since the term "fairy tale" by definition implies unreality, censorship can be minimal, especially if in the end good triumphs over evil, justice reigns, the sinner is punished, and the good person is rewarded; that is, if denial undoes the tale's insights into the truth. For the world is not just, goodness is seldom rewarded, and the cruelest deeds are selddom punished. Yet we tell all this to our children, who, like us, would naturally like to believe that the world is the way we are presenting it to them. (...) At the same time, there need be no fear of offending anyone, for the original author is unknown, the story has been recast countless times, and the truth has often been turned upside down, although sometimes it has managed to remain intact because it is so well hidden behind an innocuous mask that no one has been upset by it.”
― Alice Miller

“We should not be surprised that pedagogues at the turn of the century thought this way, for they had as yet no inkling of the existence of unconscious compulsions. But when psychoanalysts today attempt to discover who bears the guilt, they are voluntarily relinquishing what is essentially their most previous possession: their knowledge of the unconscious and of the tragedy inherent in human existence. Sigmund Freud sensed this tragedy, and perhaps he was so relieved to "discover" the Oedipus complex because he hoped it would express the universally tragic nature of human life without assigning blame to individual parents.”
― Alice Miller

“That these people were in many cases deprived nevertheless of what was most crucial for them does not yet seem to be understood, even among professionals. It has by no means become common knowledge in our society that a child's psychological nourishment derives from the understanding and respect provided by his or her first attachment figures and that child-rearing and manipulation cannot take the place of this nourishment.
On the contrary, recent developments in psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry reveal a tendency to favor "strategic techniques" and to deny collectively the significance of childhood traumas, with psychopharmaceutical treatment replacing corporal punishment. If someone attempts to talk to his doctor about his childhood, he is given pills to keep him from becoming "overly agitate." On the surface, everything possible is being done to spare the patient, but in reality it is the therapist's feared, internalized parents who are being spare at the cost of the patient's failure to discover his own truth.”
― Alice Miller

“Eski yara -yanılsamalara bel bağlayarak- başarının sarhoşluğu içinde inkâr edildiği sürece iyileşmez. Kişinin içine düştüğü bunalımlar, onu yaranın oldujça yakınına götürür. Fakat yara ancak yitirilenlerin, özellikle de yaşamın belli kritik bir evresinde yitirilmiş olanların yası yaşanabildiği zaman kapanır.”
― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“I admit that history gives us little cause to be optimistic or in hope for change. Four hundred years ago Montaigne's views on child-rearing displayed a respect for the dignity of the child that has not been approached by the methods of present-day pedagogues; and more than two thousand years ago Socrates embodied an attitude toward matters of the soul that puts our scientific psychology to shame. The prevalence of evil in the world and our willingness to succumb to superstition seem to remain constant and to be immune to the influence of new findings. Thus there is little reason to deny the justification for these pessimistic views; complicated systems theories in the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, no matter how clever and complicated, will not alter the situation either.”
― Alice Miller

“The change from rage to sorrow makes it possible for the vicious circle of repetition to be broken.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Denn hätte mein Vater den Mut gehabt, zu sehen, was mir geschah, und mich zu verteidigen [...] Ich hätte es dann gewagt, meinen Wahrnehmungen zu trauen, mich besser zu schützen und mich nicht, ähnlich wie von meiner Mutter, von ignoranten Menschen schädigen zu lassen.”
― Alice Miller, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries

“Those who persecute others are warding off knowledge of their own fate as victims.”
― Alice Miller

“It was constantly impressed upon me in forceful terms that I must obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents, teachers, and priests, and indeed of all grown-up people, including servants, and that nothing must distract me from this duty. Whatever they said was always right. These basic principles by which I was brought up became second nature to me."
-- Rudolf Höss, Commandant at Auschwitz”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence